Slouching Mario - WIP, C+C

[Cyangmou]

Also just felt to work on from ptoings awesome work. I tried to erase the "smile face" and also implied some anatomical nicetys.
Different mouth, eyebrows, hanging shoulders, other feet positioning. Also added some 'os' to the clouds and hills

[Friend]

Just a tiny suggestion for the fireflower-  This mario seems so depressed, and believe me, I know depression.  When you are depressed heavily, it shows through all of your body language, so mario could be barely hanging on to it and it could be dangling very loosely from his hand or slipping through his fingers.  Perhaps barely grasping on to it from the stem of the flower and the flower going towards the ground. I think you get the gist.  This would help making it stick out more too

[PypeBros]

So take care, kids: this is what 7 "princess in another castle" a day will take you to.

[Charlieton]

Just a tiny suggestion for the fireflower-  This mario seems so depressed, and believe me, I know depression.  When you are depressed heavily, it shows through all of your body language, so mario could be barely hanging on to it and it could be dangling very loosely from his hand or slipping through his fingers.  Perhaps barely grasping on to it from the stem of the flower and the flower going towards the ground. I think you get the gist.  This would help making it stick out more too

Yes, that was the plan.

Left the flower alone for now. Here's a small update on other stuff:


edit: Hmm, looks a bit too much orange. I'll revert to the red that's in the last update.

[PypeBros]

edit: Hmm, looks a bit too much orange. I'll revert to the red that's in the last update.

Imho, the leftmost edit by Grimsane was the one that best managed to render a slouchy belly, using under-breast shadow rather than an attempt to highlight. I bet it could be applied to the cap and arms as well.

[Bissle]

The orange doesn't look bad to me. I like the liberties you took with his regular design.

Right now, his belly looks like it sticks out at a near right angle--if viewed from the side, it would look cubical rather than roundish. If you want to emphasize a slouchy belly, you could go for something along the line of Grimsane's edit, or something like one of these:

 

If you want to deemphasize the belly, you could get away with no shading at all like in ptoing's first edit.

[redballoon]

I'm not at my notebook and using my phone so I can't do an edit, but if Mario is depressed could you not do a typical Mario cloud or Lakitu in his cloud hanging over him? Y'know like how depressed people are sometimes drawn with a heavy rain cloud hanging over them?

[Charlieton]

I'm sorry that I left this thread hanging . I could at least have told y'all that I've had problems making time for pixel arting. I've also been indecisive about where to go with the pants, considering there's been so many good, but differing suggestions about that. I guess it boils down to wether I want to emphasize or de-emphasize the roundness of the belly, which Bissle so accurately pointed out in his post.

For now, I've settled with shading that would suggest some roundness, though without making Mario look as obese as the rightmost of Bissles edits (which were great, btw!). I have also done a lot of other small changes, like changing colours to make it brighter and add more contrast between light and shadow. I've taken some additional hints from ptoings edits too, like giving the gloves and boots more shape and defintion. Also, there's a pleasant, cloudy background now.



Actually, I've been struggling with what to put in the background, too. The humour in the piece is derived from placing the melancholy, tired Mario in his usual, cheery and colourful environment. I think contrasting moods like that are funny. But the crux is I'm having a hard time figuring out what to put in the background in order to deliver that. A pleasant, bright and lightly clouded day is fine, I guess, but it's a bit boring as well. I need something more, but it can't become too cluttered. ptoings backgrounds are good in that way, but he's using other colours and I don't want to copy him too closely .

Anyway, when experimenting to find another background that could work with the colours I have, I created this mess !



Obviously it's not a very good image: the colourfullness of the background is overpowering, and makes Mario blend into it somewhat. Also, it's sloppily made. I just hastily scribbled those waves (it's supposed to be the sea in sunset, in case you can't tell) with my mouse cursor, spending about 2 min on it total. But still, I think it's very funny with such a dramatic, fantastic vista for a background, coupled with our depressed Mario. Maybe I could make it work if I mixed it up composition-wise (like, pulling the sea down a bit, leaving more room for the sky) and spent some time on actually making it pretty. However, I don't think I'm going to pursue this direction anyway, because it's thematically unfitting, meaning it's obviously not in Marios usual environment of the Mushroom Kingdom.

UNLESS the scene is taking place in the world of Super Mario Sunshine. Should I add F.L.U.D.D !?  If anything, it could make Mario look even more pathetic.

Anyway, thank you all for your help and inspiration so far! Keep the brainstorm going!

[Grimsane]

quick ed, don't think the background is that weak, I do agree the vibrancy definitely doesn't match the mood and confuses focus

one idea would be storm clouds, would further push an oppressive mood and emphasize Mario's state of melancholy

[Facet]

Hey, great to see you pick this back up, sweet progress already. I like the idea & redballoon's cloud suggestion tickled me too , so I gave it a take on the theme.

A couple of char. ideas: I think the pose could be more expressive; beyond the low hat brim it doesn't really scream lethargy to me. I tried hunched shoulders, trailing arms and turned in knees; more inward, drooping generally. I also went with the more characteristic high, rotund belly and longer legs partly to better facilitate the previous but mostly just 'cos I like 'em. I might have lightened the darkest brown and introduced some black to delineate the mousache 'n stuff in polishing up.
 
For the background I agree with your self assessment; I'd like to see something flatter, more layered and mushroom kingdom-y. I gave my version a sort of gradation of colour/mood top to bottom and I felt like green was quite evocative of the game-world for whatever reason.